Religious prejudice in Mississippi may take a new turn after police arrested Jagjee Singh, a long-distance truck driver, for driving with a flat tire. The Sikh man was mocked and told to remove his religious attire, specifically a small, sheathed ceremonial sword sewn into his trousers. Later in court, the judge ordered Singh removed because the judge didn’t like Singh’s turban, also religious attire. After that, the Department of Justice investigated, and the county’s policy now declares that religious discrimination includes allowing a person to wear head covering with a religious reason. The ACLU is now requesting an investigation of county law officers on harassment charges and plans another one on the judge and his actions.

Another problem keeping the wall between church and state comes from Kansas where Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) thinks that science classes are teaching evolution as a religious belief. The group claims that public schools “promote a ‘non-theistic religious worldview’ by allowing only ‘materialistic’ or ‘atheistic’ explanations to scientific questions.” COPE argues that by teaching evolution “the state would be ‘indoctrinating’ impressionable students in violation of the First Amendment.” To COPE, any secular teaching is a rejection of religion.

Physicist Victor Stenger pointed out that U.S. 15-year-olds are 29th among developed nations in this area. In 33 countries, only Muslim Turkey has a lower belief in evolution than the United States. In the meantime, our schools are producing a generation of science illiterates. Stenger attributes this ignorance to the threat in fundamentalist Christianity to the belief in the inerrancy of scripture.

The idea that climate warming is a hoax comes from the Christian belief that God would never allow this to happen. In 2009, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, argued against climate change because God told Noah he would never again destroy Earth by flood (Gen 8:21-22). According to Shimkus:

“The earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood. . . . I do believe God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.”

An organization called The Cornwall Alliance for The Stewardship of Creation recently issued “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.”

“We believe Earth and its ecosystems–created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence–are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.”

“We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contributions to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.”

“We deny that carbon dioxide–essential to all plant growth–is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.”

According to Stenger, “corporate profits are the force behind the denial of climate change. But denialism would not be so effective if its proponents were not able to exploit the antiscience inherent to religious faith.”

Throughout history, religion has been used as a tool of the powerful to keep the masses in line. This practice was unleashed on the government when George W. Bush was appointed president. Increasingly, religious groups manipulate people to work against their best interests in both health and economic well being primarily by lying about well-established scientific findings.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN, past presidential candidate, is one of the politicians who use Christianity to her politics. In an interview with Jan Markell (aka crackpot radio host), she explained that Hillary Clinton won’t be elected president because of the Biblical story of David and Goliath: “All David needed was one smooth stone to fell the giant. It wasn’t the stone, it wasn’t David, it was the strong right arm of a Holy God.” According to Bachmann, if “we repent, if we cry out to God, we have no idea what the Lord God will do for us in 2016.” Christians like Bachmann believe their god follow their orders.

Democrats’ “mind control experiment” is the reason for same-sex marriage, according to Colorado state senator Kent Lambert. The GOP legislator made his allegations on ex-Navy chaplain “Dr. Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt’s Internet TV show “Pray In Jesus Name.” Lambert may not know that the state doesn’t have a “homosexual marriage” law—just one for civil unions. He also mourned the loss of privacy because 6-year-old Cory Mathis is now permitted by law to use the girls’ bathroom at her school because she is transgender. If he wants to do something about privacy, he might want to check into the surveillance of the National Security Agency.

Italy has provided some great images, compliments of a pasta maker and the pope. Buitoni posted this image on its website after the Barilla Group stated that gays could eat another kind of pasta if they didn’t like the company’s bigotry.

After the Vatican threatened legal action if Gonzalo Orquinn’s exhibit ”Trialogo” of same-sex couples kissing in churches opened at the Galleria L’Opera, Huffington Post kindly put some his photos in an article.

Fox network host Bill O’Reilly, known for his books about the deaths of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, has a new book called Killing Jesus in which he writes that taxes were the reason for Jesus’s death. This one, like the others, is riddled with misrepresentations, perhaps because God told O’Reilly to write the book in a dream, according to the author. Note: O’Reilly gets the credit for the book, but his co-author did all the research.

The good news for this Sunday: When Sara Elizabeth Sheppard heard her high school economics teacher comparing atheism to smoking cigarettes, she used her cell phone to take his lecture about this in class. He claimed that atheism was against human nature and that “the mind rejects the concept of atheism” just like the body rejects smoking. The week after this lesson, he advocated prayer for a positive state of mind. Sheppard gave the recordings to the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) which contacted her school district. The essay that she wrote about her experience won her fourth place of $500 in a FFRF Scholarship Essay contest.

Sheppard said, “I had a few friends in the same class that were angry with me and said I destroyed his freedom to religion, but in reality his actions were unconstitutional and were not related to economics at all. This was economics class, not Sunday school.”

Previous elections have had one-day stories—here for a few hours and then gone. This year is different. Stories stick around. One example is Mitt Romney’s refusal to release his tax returns. Perhaps this might have been because people now are getting more news from the Internet that keeps the issues at the forefront. For whatever reason, the stories that pervade the Internet these days frequently depict the prevalence of racism.

The election of Barack Obama to the office of president created the myth that the United States had entered a post-racial era. Instead, racism has become more and more widespread. For example, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), commonly known as the deadbeat dad because he owed more than $100,000 in child support, is calling on the Tea Party to pat the Commander-in-Chief, President Obama, on the head and call him “son.” (Walsh is also known for attacking the service of his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, for her value as a veteran; Duckworth is well known as a helicopter who lost both legs and damaged an arm when her UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents.)

Andrew McCarthy renewed another story that won’t go away when he gave a speech at the National Press Club supporting Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) horrific charges that Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He went further than Bachmann, saying that she “actually understated the case” because “Ms. Abedin had a very lengthy affiliation with an institute founded by a top figure at the nexus between Saudi terror funding, Brotherhood ideology, and al-Qaeda’s jihad against the United States.”

McCarthy claimed that one connection came from Abedin’s exerting influence over Clinton by having her appear at a college that Abedin’s mother had founded in Egypt, the same school where George W. Bush’s adviser Karen Hughes spoke. Mother Jones reporter Adam Serwer asked McCarthy how the president supported sharia law when he also support marriage equality. And what about his position that the president killed Osama bin Laden because

“the Islamists [Obama] wants to engage have decided al-Qaeda is expendable” and counter to their peaceful takeover of American institutions.

McCarthy responded, “I’m a whack job, I guess.” But he keeps promoting whack ideas so that other whack jobs can follow him.

And Bachmann isn’t alone in her whack job attitude: her letters calling for an investigation about the Muslim Brotherhood’s “deep penetration” in the U.S. government were also signed by Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Thomas Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA).

Even anti-President Obama religious leaders condemned these far-fetched claims. One of 42 organizations signing a letter of protest to these letters is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which has opposed many of the president’s policies.

Gohmert called his critics “numb nuts.” One of the “numb nuts” is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who has seemingly returned to sanity after his campaigns for president (2008) and senator (2010). On the floor of the Senate, he said, “These allegations about Huma Abedin, and the report from which they are drawn, are nothing less than an unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable citizen, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant.”

Wes Harris, the founder and chairman of the Original North Phoenix Tea Party, ranted against McCain and promised a recall. Harris’ blog piece against the senator ended with what sounded like a threat: “Go to hell, Senator, it’s time for you to take your final dirt nap.”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) demanded “credible, substantial evidence” from Bachmann to back up her accusations. In response, he received a letter he described as “16 pages worth of repeated false allegations. Just regurgitated nonsense.” In the letter, Bachmann did omit one of prime sources, Frank Gaffney, so far right that even the far-right organizations have refused to allow him to attend their meetings. He is the source for Rep. Allen West’s (R-FL) claim that the House is sheltering 80 communists among the Democrats. On Gaffney’s radio show, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) endorsed Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-MN) paranoia. Bachmann is a member of this committee.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA) defended Bachmann in her Islamophobic quest. In a CBS interview with Charlie Rose, Cantor stated that her accusations came from her “concern about the security of the country.” Romney’s campaign advisor John Bolton joined Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh in saying that there was nothing wrong with Bachmann’s investigation.

Bachmann’s website has posted this statement: “The letters my colleagues and I sent on June 13 to the Inspectors General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of State – and the follow up letter I wrote to Rep. Ellison on July 13 – are unfortunately being distorted.”

One serious effect of Bachmann’s stupidity was the protesting against Secretary of State Clinton in Alexandria last month. Bachmann’s lies led Egyptians to believe that the country’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, was pushed on them through a U.S. plot. One of them explained to journalists “that the Obama Administration is pursuing a closeted pro-Muslim agenda.” A Egyptian blogger used information from Gaffney’s radio show as evidence that the U.S. has a strong connection with the Muslim Brotherhood.

After Japan won the 2011 Women’s Soccer World Cup by defeating the United States, U.S. fans flooded social media sites with racist comments about “Japs” and “Pearl Harbor.” The situation was no better this year when the U.S. defeated Japan 2-1 when U.S. fans gloated about payback, comparing the defeat to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs (MS) refused to marry church members Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson because they are black. No black wedding is permitted at the church. The Southern Baptist Convention still supports slavery.

The killing of six Sikhs in Wisconsin last week is the culmination of over 1000 cases of random violence, killings, vandalism, bullying, beatings and intimidation against the Sikh community since 9/11.

The current Republican presidential nominee told the world in a speech that people in Israel are better off because the Palestinians are a “different” (aka lower) culture than the Israelites, in the same way that people in the United States are more productive than the people in Mexico because of U.S. “culture.”

Google “U.S. racism,” and you get almost 5,000,000 hits—from just the last month. This country is nowhere near “post-racial”!

Everyone in the country should heed McCain’s statement about Bachmann’s actions: “When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches specious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are and ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poorer because of it.”